“An advance on what?”
“Well,” I whined, “like future sales or whatever.”
“That’s just it,” she said bitterly, “what if there are no future sales?”
“Then, because we’re friends?”
I heard her cough-laugh. “Yeah, we are friends. So I’m going to tell it to you right out: you can’t keep doing this. You saw the sales of all that art school crap you so loudly despise. Those are actual sales. This is not a museum. If you’re not going to give me things that sell, then you are literally costing me money. So there’s nothing to give you.”
I winced, shaking my head. I knew she was pissed, but did she have to go for my throat? I had forgotten how vicious she got when she saw a paycheck blowing away.
“You don’t understand,” I began. “Things are… pretty bad here. I just need to get past Wednesday and then I have new things I am working on. Seriously. I think you will love it.”
“I can’t,” she said flatly.
“What seriously? Come on, Bridge!”
I heard her breathing slowly and the sound of her nails flicking, flicking.
“No, I am serious. I really can’t. I mean even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. There’s no way.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, my breath coming ragged. She was my last hope. I couldn’t believe she would say no.
Oh my god this is really happening.
“What am I going to do?” I whispered, not really to her.
“I don’t know, kid,” she said, more gently. “Get a job? Move somewhere a little more, you know, affordable?”
“Jesus, that sounds sensible.”
“I hear people do it all the time.”
The nearly blank panel stared at me, all possibilities and options but no easy answers. I poured some solvent into a small jar. What could I do but paint? I didn’t know how to do anything else.
“I got to go,” I mumbled finally, feeling crushed and powerless. I guess she had nothing left to say to me either, because the line simply went dead.
CHAPTER 5
I SAT IN MY STUDIO and looked out the giant sliding glass doors to the pool. Here in the air conditioned room, safely enclosed in the hum of cool air with pool sounds completely muffled by the glass, it was like watching a movie. There was real life, just feet away, as bright as technicolor.
Roger worked the vacuum as his daughter Marnie splashed energetically from one side of the pool to the other, dragging herself up to the concrete patio by the ladder, then running around for another bounce on the diving board. Over and over, she repeated this circuit. It just never seemed to get old for her.
I looked around the pool enclosure at the casual yet trendy deck seating, the planters full of tropical plants that Roger cared for weekly, and the towels I was not responsible for washing. It was like some kind of paradise, I had to admit. A paradise I had failed to care for. I wondered how the hell I was going to tell Roger that I had finally run out of money and he was going to have to try to get hired by the new owners when the county sold the house.
Oh my god, I begged myself. Please let’s think about something else.
The linen panel sat on the easel, primly waiting for my brush. I sighed. I knew exactly what the painting was supposed to be. It had been on my list for six months, and Bridget expected it before fall. It should have been simple: just paint the damn thing. Still, I hesitated, my brush hovering in the air. It seemed so… false, now. So transparently, laughably inadequate.
Groaning dramatically in my solitude, I got up off the stool and padded barefoot in a circle. The crate of paintings sat by the door and I yanked the top off, dragging them out one by one and leaning them against the wall.
“Wrong, all wrong,” I muttered as I took them in. They were so rigid, so formal. The life had been strangled out of them. Edna was exactly right.
How did that happen? That’s not what I ever intended. I just wanted to be excellent. While the other art students I had studied with were all about “redefining” every technical benchmark, mostly by refusing to even try, I believed that thoughtful, dedicated practice would result in better rewards. I thought I took it more seriously, more humbly than thinking any 19-year-old kid was ready or worthy of “redefining” 2000 years of art history.
But somehow, I had gotten stuck in technique. All the paintings looked like generic class assignments to me now. I would have gotten an A, though. It just wasn’t anything more than that. Class A work.
My work had winnowed itself into a very narrow groove. The trouble was, the longer I stayed in there, the deeper it was going to get. Pretty soon the walls were going to fall in on me.